


Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams: Your Cheatin' Heart Songs

by demogrove (goblinoftheyear)



Series: tumblr prompts [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy remembers his mom, Cabin Fic, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Stockholm Syndrome, These boys dont know shit yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 15:50:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14115702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblinoftheyear/pseuds/demogrove
Summary: Based on a combo of these prompts: 23. “What’s cookin’ good lookin’?” AND 48. “Why are you crying?”





	Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams: Your Cheatin' Heart Songs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eternalgoldfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalgoldfish/gifts).



They’d been hauled up in Hopper’s cabin for what felt like months. The darkness of the forest made the days bleed into the nights. Billy had no way of telling where daylight began and ended. They were hiding here, him and Steve Harrington. Steve had protested wildly at first, ‘ _I’d rather take my chance with the government assassins_ ’. After a while he’d cooled. They’d make conversation mostly about music or California or their cars. The latter conversation tended to get unnecessarily heated.

Steve was messier than he looked. He’d leave plates and books strewn all over the little cabin. He’d leave the blankets from the sofa bed slung over various surfaces. At first they took turns between the bed and the sofa, but the sofa was uncomfortable and they’d be cranky after spending the night there. They decided it was easier to share the bed with a pile of pillows separating them. One particularly cold night Steve removed the pillows and moved up besides Billy who emanated heat like a coal fire. They slept well that night, better than any other night. So after then, the pillows remained on the floor.

After then, there was an unspoken fondness in Billy’s chest when he looked over at Steve.

* * *

 

Steve drummed his hands on the record rack in a sarcastic fanfare.  

“Today we haaaaave…” Steve pulled an old sleeve from their ‘not listened to section’, it was clear that it hadn’t moved for a long time, a sun bleached spine and dust adorning the top of the sleeve, “ _Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams: Your Cheatin’ Heart Songs_ ”

Steve shrugged and put the record on the player, carefully placing the needle. The record sputtered into life, the needle skipping slightly over the flecks of dust. 

Billy grimaced as the first song began, he should have known by the title of the record that he was going to hate it.

Time passed whilst Steve read and Billy whittled a small piece of wood down to a nub with his pen knife.

Suddenly Billy recognised one of the songs:

‘ _Hey good lookin’ whatcha got cookin_ ’

The lyrics flowed out into the cabin.

Billy closed his eyes and saw his mom, blue eyes and blonde curls like the California sun. She swayed in kitchen, the hem of her skirt caressing her calves with every movement. Billy remembered the click of her heels across the tiled floor, each step more spritely than the last. He’d watch from the dining room table, potentially waiting for his dinner whilst his older sister would tap her cutlery in time with the music. She’d sing in a voice not too dissimilar to Janis Joplin, piling veggies onto Billy’s and Katie’s plate. She’d kiss his forehead as she put down the plate, singing the song under her breath as she did so.

Billy wasn’t sure if it was the culmination of being stuck in a cabin with Steve Harrington for what seemed to be months on end or if it was the sudden loudness of all the thoughts he’d been trying to ignore so desperately for years. Each thought going from a dampened whisper to a scream in the quietness of Hopper’s cabin. The sound of the song muffled out by the screech of tires and crunching of metal and vision of his childhood being eclipsed by the blinding light of the headlights of a truck.

Billy’s eyes began to fill with water, a choking lump forming in his throat. A small whimper escaped as he tried to stifle the sobs.

“Why are you crying?”  Steve asked, peering over the file from Hawkins’ Lab. He pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose in order to see Billy better.

“I’m not crying” Billy barked, and looked down at the block of wood he was hacking at with his pen knife, into some spear shaped thing.

“You are” Steve pressed, putting the folder down onto his lap.

“Hopper’s music is just  _so bad_ ” Billy chuckled, trying to distract Steve from the tear tracks that were burning into his cheeks.

“I thought you didn’t mind that  _Van Morrison_  record” Steve chirped. Billy knew Steve liked that Van Morrison album. He’d caught him singing songs from it whilst pottering around the cabin on more than one occasionally. Billy didn’t mind it, but he didn’t want to give the prying Steve the satisfaction.

“Momentary insanity” He snarled, not looking up from his poorly whittled creation.

“But really are you crying?” Steve asked one more time.

Billy’s head snapped up.

“Get out of my face Harrington” His blue eyes were feral and wild, his hand gripped the pen knife so tightly his knuckles whitened.

“Seriously don’t” Unexpectedly his voice grew softer and more genuine, the sadness peeking through. His eyes began to glass over again, the tears in the corners quivered and  begged to be unleashed.

He quickly looked down to his lap again, a tear dropping onto the denim of his jeans as his head moved, “I have no idea how long we will need to wait here and I’d rather not have to wait it out next to your rotting corpse.”

“Asshole” Steve hissed, picking up the file again, only his dark hair visible over the top of the manila folder.

“I thought we were getting along?” Steve muttered from behind the folder.

“Guess that was just  _Stockholm Syndrome_ ” Billy barked, although he knew Steve was right.

“What?” Steve peered over the folder again, perplexed.

Billy sighed and looked at Steve, “it’s when you start to sympathise with the person you’re trapped by or with in this case” “It’s from this bank robbery in Stockholm where some of the hostages flipped over to the robber’s side I think”

Steve was impressed, although Steve was easy to impress and entertain by this point. He’d read everything in that little cabin over 3 times.

“How do you know that shit?” Steve’s admiration seeped through his words. Billy caught the wry smile on Steve’s lips and the sadness inside him began to dissipate slightly.

“I read” Billy muttered, trying not to return Steve’s smile.

“You know how to read?” Steve joked.

Quickly, Steve had learned that Billy was one of the smartest people he knew, there was an aged wisdom and rawness about him. He’d only let it seep out of him when he wasn’t hauled up behind walls and walls of self protection, just before they’d doze off to sleep or when he was engrossed in a task of some sorts. It was the kind of wisdom you’d expect from a man hauled up in a Tibetan monestary not from a Californian teenger with a fondness for metal music and leather. It was endearing in a way, although he’d never tell Billy that.

This was one of those times.

“I can’t wait to get out of here and never see you again” Billy responded, without a single ounce of malice in his voice.

Steve put down the folder with a loud slap, “Coffee?” he asked, whilst sauntering into the kitchen area.

“Whatever” Billy began to whittle his crappy creation again.

The water hissed as it boiled, between that and the final song of the Del Shannon record he could he Steve sing lightly and softly again:

 

_I wanna rock your gypsy soul_

_Just like way back in the days of old_

_Then magnificently we will float_

_Into the mystic…_

 

Suddenly, he was sat at a dining table again. The warmness of the stove light illuminated Steve’s soft features. He sang, his voice raspy and warm like his mother’s and rather than melancholy and guilt bubbling inside of him there was only fondness, a serendipitous moment from the aching of his past and the discomfort of his present. Suddenly there was the future and for some reason it started here, in this is cabin with Steve.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on tumblr: @demogrove


End file.
